Subject: ?Axios AM: Mike's Top 10 — Trump kneecaps Bannon (and we have the dope on why) — O'Reilly's vacation — Dodge Demon
From: "Mike Allen" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2017 06:36:09 -0400 (EDT)

Presented by The Boeing Company:

Trump kneecaps Bannon (and we have the dope on why) — O'Reilly's=vacation — Dodge Demon

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Presented By The Boeing Company

Axios AM

By Mike Allen = ·Apr 12, 2017

1 big thing: Trump kneecaps Bannon

Allies of Steve Bannon fear the White House chief strat=gist is about to be pushed out, following the posting last night of an omi=ous interview with Trump by Michael Goodwin, a New York Post co=umnist and someone the president has been comfortable with over many years=

The brutal headline: "Trump won't definitive=y say he still backs Bannon."

What Trump said: "I=like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign un=il very late ... I had already beaten all the senators and all the governo=s, and I didn't know Steve. I'm my own strategist and it wasn't like I was=going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary. ... Steve=is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will."

The instant fallout: Axios' Jonathan Swan hears Bannon allie= inside and outside the White House were taken by surprise when Goodwin's =olumn posted, and are distraught. Bannon allies are bitter about the role =hey believe economic adviser Gary Cohn has played in undercutting their gu= to POTUS. In private conversations, they call him "Globalist Gary." In te=t messages, the shorthand is CTC (Carbon Tax Cohn) or one simple emoji: =F0���.

What got Bannon in trouble: Axios AM=is told that President Trump didn't like the stories about Bannon as the S=engali, or leaks against Jared and Ivanka, or planted stories that he blam=d Bannon for. It was less than 10 weeks ago that Bannon appeared on the co=er of TIME as "THE GREAT MANIPULATOR," with the inside story asking if he =as "the Second Most Powerful Man in the World."

Bannon's mistake: He did little to build alliances and a person=l retinue within the White House, while his rivals did the opposite. So he=wound up isolated in "West Wing Survivor.'

Th= huge risk for Trump: The base (including Breitbart) remains very=attached to Bannon, and would go crazy if he were axed. And does the presi=ent lose his psychic connection to the issue palette that helped put him i= power?

What it means: Swan points o=t that if Bannon goes, there's no one of similar status in the White House=to push the nationalist agenda to Trump – and more centrist figure= are already ascendant (Jivanka, Gary Cohn). Without Bannon's voice, this =ecomes a much more conventional White House. It would be an acute normaliz=ng of the staff, although no one can normalize Trump.

2. Tweet du jour

Maggie later a=ded: "Trump loves the shiny new object, whether it's a thing =r a person. Right now that shiny new object is Cohn."

3. A chance for Putin, Tillerson diplomacy in Moscow

Rebecca Zisser / Axios

Steve LeVine, a former foreign cor=espondent who joined Axios from Quartz this week, writes: "Putin knows tha= he has a problem in Syria — he wants to retain Russia's military =resence there, but is not wedded to President Bashar al-Assad. Therefore, =e will be looking for a face-saving way out of the current crisis."

Get smart: Both presidents ha=e extremely sober-minded senior aides who understand that the harsh exchan=e of rhetoric between the countries could escalate out of control.

<=trong>Same lead story in all Big 3 papers ... N.Y. Times: "White =ouse Says Russia Is Engaged in Covering Up Syrians' Chemical Attack" ... W=J: "U.S. Accuses Russia of Cover-Up" ... WashPost: "U.S. disputes Russia's=claims."

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4. Trump's talk big, act small White House

Visitors to Steve Bannon's West Wing office are often t=ken by his whiteboard, covered with promises from the campaign trail. Trum='s chief strategist checks off tasks when they're accomplished, but there =re some pledges on Bannon's whiteboard that nobody believes will be met =E2�� not in the first 100 days, and in some conspicuous cases, not eve=.

Read Axios' Jonathan Swan <=a>on "Trump's rhetoric vs reality": "The reality looks m=ch smaller, and, as much as Trump would hate to admit it — convent=onal.

Cowen's Chris Krueger raises possibility tax reform de=ayed to next year: "Base case remains tax relief in late Q4, thou=h potential delay to Q1 18. Will need FY18 Budget to move taxes. So back t= Square One on process, policy, and politics. Q1 17 a policy zero."

=strong>Department of Close Calls ... Kansas City Star: "Republi=an Ron Estes will be the next congressman from the state of Kansas, but hi= victory Tuesday night did not come as easily as many expected in the deep=red state. GOP strategists warned in recent days that Democrat James Thomp=on, a civil rights attorney, was in striking distance ... in =he special election to replace Mike Pompeo."

5. How Spicer's afternoon unraveled

Sean Spicer at yes=erday's briefing: "You had someone as despicable as Hitler wh= didn't even sink to using chemical weapons. So you have to, if you're Rus=ia, ask yourself is this a country that you and a regime that you want to =lign yourself with? "

Later question: "Sean, t=anks. I just want to give you an opportunity to clarify something you said=that seems to be gaining some traction right now. 'Hitler didn't even sink=to the level of using chemical weapons.' What did you mean by that?"
<=i>Spicer: "I think when you come to sarin gas, there was =o — he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that =ssad is doing, I mean, there was clearly — I understand your poin=, thank you.

Q: "I'm just getting =E2�� "

Spicer: "Thank you, I app=eciate that. There was not — he brought them into the Holocaust c=nter, I understand that. But I'm saying in the way that Assad used them, w=ere he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent — into the =iddle of towns. It was brought —so the use of it — I app=eciate the clarification there. That was not the intent."

Emailed statement to the pool, 40 minutes later, "Cla=ification on statement from Press Briefing": "In no way was I trying to le=sen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust. I was trying to draw a distinc=ion of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on populatio= centers. Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable."=/li>
Spicer, a few hours later, to CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "I was obviously trying to make a point ab=ut the heinous acts that Assad had made against his own people last week, =sing chemical weapons and gas. Frankly, I mistakenly made an inappropriate=and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which, frankly, there is n= comparison. And for that, I apologize. It was a mistake to do that."
=/ul>
Spicer's job security! @NancyPelosi tweets: "@realDonaldTrump, it's =ime to fire @PressSec Sean Spicer."

6. The long view on Trump

Rick Perlstei= — who has written books on Goldwater, Nixon and Reag=n — in N.Y. Times Magazine, "I Thought I Understood the American R=ght. Trump Proved Me Wrong. A historian of conservatism looks back at how =e and his peers failed to anticipate the rise of the president":

The 1960s and '70s New York=in which Donald Trump came of age, as much as Klan-ridden Indiana in the 1=20s or Barry Goldwater's Arizona in the 1950s, was at conservatism's cutti=g edge, setting the emotional tone for a politics of rage. ...

The often-cynical negotia=ion between populist electioneering and plutocratic governance on the righ= has long been not so much a matter of policy as it has been a matter of s=ow business. ... [T]he producers of "The Apprentice" carefully crafted a T=ump character who was the quintessence of steely resolve and all-knowing m=stery.

7. Drip, drip ...

AP break at 5 a.m. ..= "Records match some Ukraine ledger payments to ex-Trump aide," b= Jack Gillum, Chad Day and Jeff Horowitz: "Last August, a handwritten ledg=r surfaced in Ukraine with dollar amounts and dates next to the name of Pa=l Manafort, who was then Donald Trump's campaign chairman. Ukrainian inves=igators called it evidence of off-the-books payments from a pro-Russian po=itical party."

"Now, financial =ecords ... confirm that at least $1.2 million in payments listed =n the ledger next to Manafort's name were actually received by his consult=ng firm in the United States. They include payments in 2007 and 2009, prov=ding the first evidence that Manafort's firm received at least some money =isted in the so-called Black Ledger."

Why it matters: "Manafort and his spokesman, Jason Maloni, have maintained the ledg=r was fabricated and said no public evidence existed that Manafort or othe=s received payments recorded in it."

8. Re-accommodating United's image, stock price

"United faces mor= questions as dragged passenger hires high-powered attorney" =E2�� Chicago Tribune: "David Dao, the passenger at the center of the g=owing imbroglio, retained a high-powered Chicago personal injury lawyer, T=omas Demetrio. Dao was in a Chicago hospital undergoing treatment for his =njuries ... [F]our [U.S.] senators sent several questions about the 'very =isturbing' incident."

Why it matters ... N.Y. Times front-pager, "Dragging of Passenger Sets=Off a Crisis at United": "[T]he videos had already cast an unwelco=e light not just on United, but on the airline industry's efforts to maxim=ze profits. As companies push to make money from baggage fees, se=t reservations and other services that were once included with a basic pla=e ticket, the videos added the potential for an even harsher indignity: si=ting in a seat with a ticket and getting physically ejected from the airpl=ne."

9. Will he be back?

Amid an advertiser backlash prompted by accusations of =arassment, Bill O'Reilly announced on last night's show that he's taking a=vacation. A Fox News spokesperson confirmed to Axios AM that "O'Reilly is =n a pre-planned vacation and he will return on April 24th."

=a href="http://link.axios.com/click/9370296.38250/aHR0cDovL21vbmV5LmNubi=jb20vMjAxNy8wNC8xMS9tZWRpYS9iaWxsLW9yZWlsbHktdmFjYXRpb24vP3V0bV9zb3VyY2U9b=V3c2xldHRlciZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsJnV0bV9jYW1wYWlnbj1uZXdzbGV0dGVyX2F4aW9z=W0/5871993924c17c54d77a8b8cB32361d94" target="_blank">CNN's Dylan Byers<=a> says that per "O'Reilly spokesperson Mark Fabiani," the vacati=n is a family trip that was planned in October, including airline and hote= reservations.

Dana Perino is scheduled to fill in =or O'Reilly tonight, we're told.

Gabe Sherman<=a> in New York mag: "Two highly-placed Fox News sources say 21st =entury Fox CEO James Murdoch would like O'Reilly to be permanently taken o=f the air, while his father Rupert and older brother Lachlan are more incl=ned to keep him."

This news from Monday's=Times looks worrisome for Reilly: "21st Century Fox has=enlisted the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to inve=tigate at least one accusation of sexual harassment against the Fox News h=st Bill O'Reilly. ... Wendy Walsh, a former guest on Mr. O'Reilly's show, =.. called 21st Century Fox's anonymous hotline last week, prompting the in=estigation."

Why it matters: "Paul Weiss is th= same law firm that conducted an internal investigation into Roger Ailes."=/li>

10. 1 fast thing

2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon yesterday during a media preview for the=New York International Auto Show / AP's Julie Jacobson

"Freaky Fast: Dodge D=mon Challenger lays claim to fastest production car":

Fiat Chrysler's Dodge brand ... says i=s Demon Challenger can go from zero to 60 ... in 2.3 seconds. That beats t=e Tesla Model S P100D sedan, which hits 60 in 2.5 seconds.

Dodge used explosions, burno=ts and a small drag strip to roll out the car Tuesday just ahead of the Ne= York International Auto Show press days. The company even brought in Fast=and Furious star Vin Diesel for effect.

The street-legal Demon also can hit 140 mph whi=e running a quarter mile in 9.65 seconds, about two seconds faster than a =ypical muscle car. It's available in the fall.

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